(LOS ANGELES, 11:30 P.M., WEDNESDAY, 9/26/62)
Black-bag job.
We crouched in a Fed surveillance van. We deployed sign language and ran checklists.
Ten days presurveillance. Check. De River leaves his office at six sharp. Check. There’s no on-premises guard. Check. The address is not silent alarm–rigged. It does not plug to Hollywood Station. Phil Irwin confirmed it five times.
Nat and Phil are out cruising the neighborhood. They’re two-way radio–equipped. There’s no hinky broadcast traffic. They’re running wide perimeters. Oakwood to Fountain/La Brea to Fairfax and back.
We parked across the street from de River’s building. The downstairs neighbors were off in Saint-Tropez. We ran inventory checks:
Power drills. Crowbars. Dissolving solvent. Wheel-fitted hand trucks. Flashlights. Penlights. Lock picks. Rolls of acoustical padding. Check—eight times over.
Our gear is stashed in reinforced duffel bags. Double-check that.
De River’s living room adjoins his file trove. A reinforced door provides access. The file trove is there. His files might be coded. They will be boxed. This will take time.
Eddie brought powdered nitro. He knew how to rig controlled blowouts. De River kept a narco safe. We decided to blow it and split the contents. He planned to donate his cut to the Free Cuba Committee. I planned to stick my cut up my nose.
We hauled the duffel bags out of the van. We quick-marched them across the street and up the steps. We reconnoitered on the second-floor landing. Eddie fumbled picks at the door lock. Shit—none of them fit.
I removed a power drill and jammed in a steel-cutter bit. I bored the keyhole and derailed the inner-lock mechanism. The front door popped open. We blew our undetected-entry shot.
We got in fast. We shut the door. The bore noise ran minimal. We bit down on our penlights. We walked to the steel-plate door and quadrant-flashed it.
It looks impregnable. That’s tough fucking shit.
It’s two-side milled. On both sides. It pushes in off two fulcrums. There’s a left-side hinge and a right-side hinge. It requires two firm shoves.
I took the left. Eddie took the right. We created a noise-deflection shield. We cut strips of acoustical padding and taped them to the flanking walls. We slapped on four full layers. We mummified the file-room enclosure. We went in with power drills and crowbars and took the door down.
It took twenty-seven minutes and twelve left-side and right-side bores. I did not posit an internal alarm system. The files were surely all criminal. De River would never risk police or security-company scrutiny.
The door wiggled.
The door shimmied.
The door caved.
It listed backward. We got behind it and put all our weight up against it. We slow-slow-slow eased it down to the floor.
We’re inside the file trove. It’s eight feet deep. There’s shelves filled with manuscript boxes. They line the walls shoulder-high.
I caught my breath. I said, “Look for a simple number-substitution code.” Eddie went Sí—yo comprende.
We hauled down boxes. I checked three for prototype distinctions. The boxes were marked by eight-letter or fourteen-letter designations. That meant “Sessions” or “Correspondence.” That meant tape boxes for “Sessions” and envelopes or folders for “Correspondence.” Substitution-code numbers would be scrawled above that. They marked the patients’ names.
I confirmed my theory. “Sessions” meant tape reels inside. “Correspondence” meant letters or printed matter inside. The boxes were heedlessly marked and stacked. As in “Box 1 of 3, 4, 19, 12” et al.
We hauled down boxes. I looked for seven-number first names and six-number surnames. They would designate “Marilyn Monroe.” The M’s should be supplanted with two number thirteens. M was the thirteenth letter of the alphabet. Eddie worked the same motif for “Albert Aadland.” Six letters, seven letters, two number ones to capitalize.
We hauled down boxes. We went at it. Hours crawled by. I scored four hours and seven minutes in:
“Marilyn Monroe/Sessions/Box 1 of 3.” Eddie scored nine minutes later:
“Albert Aadland/Correspondence/Box 1 of 4.”
We rounded up our seven-box swag and placed them on hand trucks. We packed our duffel bags. We scoured the apartment. The narcotics safe was tucked behind a sliding wall panel.
Eddie dragged it out. We donned face masks and worked in asbestos gloves. We daubed and brushed liquid nitro at the hinge points and dial backings. We quadruple-wrapped the safe in acoustical baffling and tapped the charge flush against the dial mount. We set the charge and stood back. The door popped. The box lurched. We filled four paper bags with the best shit on earth.
We off-loaded our gear and the file boxes. We made three trips out to the van. We were stone gone at 6:04 a.m.